2013 Pagani Huayra First Drive

Driving is Believing: Exclusive Hypercar is Art in Motion

It's tempting to dismiss the Pagani Huayra as another fringe hypercar -- another exclusive, expensive, pointless toy for the collector who's bored with his Ferraris and wants to tool around to the country club in something his rich buddies don't have. Tempting, that is, until you drive it.

The Huayra is the follow-up to the Zonda, the debut model from self-taught supercar auteur Horacio Pagani. It features an all-new chassis with a central monocoque made from titanium-infused carbon fiber, and the wheelbase has been stretched 2.75 inches over the Zonda. The suspension is pure race car stuff: double wishbones milled from billets of a copper-rich aluminum alloy called Avional, with pushrod-actuated Ohlins shocks.The carbon bodywork was styled by Pagani himself, and features active aerodynamics -- flaps at each corner of the car that can move independently and alter downforce according to inputs from sensors that measure speed, lateral and longitudinal acceleration, roll, and steering angle. The suspension will also automatically lower the nose to increase the car's angle of attack and increase downforce at speed.

Here's the simple math: The Huayra weighs less than 3000 pounds (dry) and has 720 horsepower. Oh, and it also has more than 737 lb-ft of torque, courtesy of a new 60-degree, 6.0-liter twin-turbo V-12 developed expressly for the car by the engine wizards at AMG, replacing the 7.3-liter naturally aspirated AMG V-12 in the Zonda. The mid-mounted engine drives the rear wheels through a seven-speed, single clutch automated manual transmission built by Xtrac, the British company that makes trannys for F1 cars and Le Mans prototypes.There was some wrangling over the new engine's configuration. Horacio Pagani didn't like the idea of turbos, and didn't like the naturally aspirated V-8 AMG first proposed as a replacement for the Zonda's 7.3. He wanted a V-12, but AMG engineers were insistent that to meet emissions and fuel consumption standards through the next decade, the engine had to have forced induction. AMG clearly knew what it was talking about. At cruising speeds, the Huayra is one of the most fuel-efficient supercars in the business, says Pagani, brandishing figures fresh from the test lab showing it has achieved 21 mpg (U.S.) on the Euro highway cycle.

Nailing the gas in the Huayra is like lighting the afterburners on an F-15, though. The new V-12, codenamed M158 in AMG-speak, will pull cleanly and smoothly from as little as 1000 rpm, but once the tach needle swings past the 2500 mark and the turbos get into their comfort zone, the thrust is epic and utterly relentless all the way to 6000 rpm. I didn't go past 160 mph more than once on the bumpy, busy autostrada near Bologna, but the Huayra got there without breaking sweat; a casual canter en route to its claimed 230 mph top speed.

More impressive than the Huayra's raw speed on the autostrada, however, is its agility on the winding two-lanes. This is a big car -- 181.2 inches long and 80.2 inches wide, rolling on a 110.2-inch wheelbase -- but its low mass -- it weighs about 200 pounds less than a Ferrari 458 Italia, and a whopping 1300 pounds less than a Bugatti Veyron -- means it darts and weaves through the twisties like Jerry Rice on a crossing route. Factor in that weapons-grade torque and a complete absence of turbo-lag, and the Huayra will destroy a canyon road using only second and third gears.Which is just as well, because the seven-speed automated manual transmission is the car's weakest link. Sure, it's light -- at 211 pounds, the single-clutch unit is less than half the weight of the 458 Italia's dual-clutch 'box -- and the F1-style transverse gearset keeps most of the transmission's mass inside the wheelbase, but the speed and finesse of its shifts are nowhere near as good as those of the Ferrari. It feels like a first-gen Lamborghini automated manual -- slow and clumsy in auto mode, thumpingly brutal in manual mode if you keep your foot on the gas through the shifts.

The Huayra's steering isn't quite as tactile as that of the Zonda, but that's because Pagani has deliberately dialed some snooze factor into the chassis in recognition of the way most Huayra owners will actually drive the cars. When pushed hard into turns, the Huayra will eventually develop mild understeer, which Horacio Pagani prefers to the snap oversteer that usually bedevils mid-engine supercars at the limit. "It's safer," he says simply. The brakes, monster carbon-ceramic units developed in partnership with Brembo, are stellar. You can grenade the pedal time after time, and they just keep coming back for more.Our tester was running on the standard P Zero tires specially developed for the Huayra by Pirelli. The optional P Zero Corsas have proven 20 percent faster on the track, says Pagani, but are 10 percent less efficient in the wet. If I had the money for a Huayra, I'd probably opt for the Corsas to give the car a touch more front end bite on initial turn in, and drive my Bentley Conti GT on rainy days.Our tester was also only the fifth Huayra ever built. The Pagani shop is tiny and it's production methods artisanal, so development is ongoing. Andrea Galletti, who spent 10 years working for the Ferrari F1 team and helped develop the 599XX, said the variable front ride height settings will be changed to alter the car's angle of attack and improve stability at speed (I mentioned I had been chasing the front end around more than I had expected above 140 mph on the rough autostrada), and that anti-roll bar settings would also be changed to improve initial turn-in response.

Perhaps with their next super car they could design the engine so it has cylinder deactivation technology, so not all 12 cylinders are firing when you are just casually driving the car? Part time Atkinson valve behavior too, so it would be in that mode when you are light on the gas and would immediately transtition to all 12 cylinder and OTTO cycle when you start pressing on the gas more. No delay, the transition should be able to take place within 1 cycle of the engine.

With this you could easily boost the MPG up by 25% or so without performance penalties, as the efficiency technology will deactivate itself as soon as you press on the gas more.

It looks awesome but it still has a way to go. The Bugatti Veyron is an 8-litre, mid engine grand touring car. The Super Sport version is the fastest road-legal production car in the world with a top speed of 267mph of corse we are talking money is no object. That why very one is giving the ZR1 a beat down right.

Amazing piece of engineering but I am a bit puzzled when it is compared to a ZR1. I think even comparing performance is simplistic. Put a set of P zero corsa system heat cycled and you can shave a few 1/10s

As I own a E63 AMG and like the ZR1, these are mass production cars. Like the guys from Top gear are saying.... they are not an instrument of terror that wants to kill you. You don't need any guts to drive them....

Pagani makes car that have a soul of a race car and build in a way in a category of its own. This is the Stradivarius of cars and Stradivarius price.

What an absolute masterpiece. Just gorgeous. Even though the attention to detail is so painstaking, I still wonder if this thing could hold up to long term track abuse. Would love to find out, Motor Trend.

What an absolute masterpiece. Just gorgeous. Even though the attention to detail is so painstaking, I still wonder if this thing could hold up to long term track abuse. Would love to find out, Motor Trend.

@BigDogDiesel There will be no 2014 Corvette ZR1. We are not even sure yet that there will be a ZR1, even though there more than likely will be. But to utter the name Corvette in the same conversation as this car completely misses the point. As for the car, I think it is certainly pretty. I think it is everything Horacio Pagani wanted it to be. But the simple fact is that the Zonda is twice the car in terms of pure performance madness. I would have one in a second over this car.

Much like the Saleen "hypercars" from here in America, Pagani just doesn't get my respect. I view them a small boutique producing extremely limited runs of kit cars. They don't have the engineering ability to make their own engines, and they certainly don't have a racing history to speak of. So good for you rich dude with a $1,000,000 hypercar. If it were my money I would have bought a 458, ZR1, GT500, CTS-V, and a house. Park your kit car beside all of that and tell me you wouldn't like to make a trade!

Anyone who would dare compare this to a ZR-1 has completely missed the point. To utter that car's name in the same sentence is an insult to Horacio Pagani. This car is so much more than the sum of it's parts. The craftsmanship, the quality, the engineering, and the attention-to-detail here is closer to aviation levels than it is to Corvette levels.As for the car itself, give me a Zonda speced like Lewis Hamilton's any day of the week, but I have a soft-spot for the old cars. This is still an amazing car, though. Just not the biggest fan of the front styling. But I could deal with it for the orgasmic driving experience, surely.

@BigDogDieselSure, by 2014 you should have enough cash to buy that Hyundai Accent you've been dreaming of for a long time. But beware, it's getting more expensive. Maybe by 2015 then.The funny thing is that people who are going to buy Pagani Huayra already have at least 1 ZR1 sitting in their garage which makes these tiny internet fanboywars even more insignificant.

skyguy-I know I will never be able to afford one. I know they are useless. But I am thankful there are people making and buying these works of art. I don't envy or begrudge those who buy these wonderful creations, I am simply glad I can see them and know they exist. Jealousy and envy aren't becoming.

L-Finesseness,I was just joking about the ZR1 beating this. I am a corvette fan but the truth is the truth. This car is ten times the value of a cheap plastic corvette. They might be equal in performance, but once again we can get a 1990 civic to tie them in performance. still doesnt mean anything. this car is about value and art.

@danwat1234 I'm sure they could, but if you can afford a 1.5 million dollar car, that is driven to the yacht, or the club or just to impress on the sunniest of days, fuel mileage is the very last thing you'd be thinking about.

21MPG on the highway; That rating is with the European test cycle, which is almost always way off from real world MPG. It would probably get something like 17MPG on the EPA highway test cycle and somewhere just about 10MPG in the city.